Tuesday, October 25, 2016

Evan McMullin says Johnson's not a libertarian; Johnson responds

October 25, 2016 - "Independent conservative presidential candidate Evan McMullin ... is once again championing his own libertarian bonafides in contrast to Libertarian Party nominee Gary Johnson ... to The Weekly Standard, the neoconservative magazine that has been as enthusiastic about the McMullin campaign as it has been hostile to libertarian ideas over the years.

"Gary Johnson is not actually a libertarian," McMullin told TWS at a press event. "He has tax policies that are not libertarian, his stance on religious liberty is not libertarian." […]

McMullin is pro-life, while Johnson believes in a right to abortion. "If Gary Johnson were a real libertarian, I probably would not be in this race," McMullin said.

"I caught up with Johnson this afternoon just after he had finished a Facebook Live video to promote his new book Common Sense for the Common Good: Libertarianism as the end of two-party tyranny ... and asked him about McMullin's comments.

"'Well, all I can point ... to on my libertarian bonafides is that I've been the nominee of the Libertarian Party two cycles,' he said. 'And that is the libertarian hardcore that … decides that. So I don't know how you can get any more bonafide than that.'

"(This answer was a milder echo of what Party Chair Nicholas Sarwark told me two weeks ago: 'I trust the judgment of dedicated Libertarian Party members from around the nation somewhat more than that of an unremarkable Capitol Hill staffer.... The day I take advice on who's a real libertarian from a former CIA operative who was an insider in Washington and at Goldman Sachs, being propped up by dead-end neoconservatives like Bill Kristol and shameless Republican political consultants like Rick Wilson, is the day I'll resign as Chairman of the Libertarian Party.')

"What about the religious-liberty charge, which has dogged Johnson throughout 2016? 'I would have signed the Civil Rights bill of 1964, and I think that that's in essence what he is pointing out, that a real Libertarian would have vetoed that, or not signed it. I would have signed it.'"